Fla. Bar backs allowing DNA tests

TALLAHASSEE -- Scores of inmates, including murderers and rapists, could get a chance to prove their innocence with the help of DNA evidence under a proposal sent to the Florida Supreme Court.

The Florida Bar's Board of Governors Friday agreed that anyone convicted of a crime should be given two years to seek DNA testing. The Bar proposal asks the state high court to consider the issue without endorsing specific language.

Currently, convicts have no avenue in Florida to seek DNA testing to exonerate them unless a request is made within two years of a conviction becoming final.

The Supreme Court could extend the deadline, giving inmates an unlimited amount of time instead of limiting them to two years.

Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton, chairman of the Criminal Procedure Rules Committee for the Bar, said the use of DNA in appeals is a procedural issue that should be decided by the Supreme Court.

The proper role for the Legislature, Eaton said, would be to provide necessary money and pass a law requiring courts to preserve DNA evidence so it would be available if needed for an appeal.

The need to update time limits became clear in December after DNA tests exonerated death row inmate Frank Lee Smith, 52, in the 1985 rape and murder of an 8-year-old Fort Lauderdale girl. Smith had died in prison 11 months earlier from cancer.

After Smith's death, Gov. Jeb Bush came out in support of allowing inmates to use DNA testing to prove their innocence.

At least two bills have been filed by Republican leaders in the state Legislature this year to let inmates raise DNA as a defense if their identity in committing a crime is in question.

The move by the Bar could spark a legal clash between the Republican-controlled Legislature and the court system.